This invention relates to method and apparatus for public telephony through normal and trunk call telephone sets (hereinafter U+I) equipped with a selector switch. In particular the invention relates to an improvement to a public telephone method and apparatus wherein the user's personal telephone number and a personal dialing code are used to effect debiting charges.
As a result of prior studies of the Applicant, a novel and different collection procedure has been developed which, substituting for previous systems operating on pre-payment by the introduction of coins and/or tokens, afforded the closest approximation, as regards payment by the user, between the amount collected and the amount due.
This known method provides essentially for the telephone set to accept coins and tokens, count them, and transmit the credit information to a centralized logics which processes a collection algorithm in accordance with the selection digits for rate discrimination purposes among the various types of calls, and transmits corresponding collection orders to the telephone set, the logics being bidirectionally connected to a supervisor device which controls its operation by transferring into it all the information data susceptible to programming and receiving therefrom statistic information related to telephone traffic and general monitoring.
The apparatus implementing said system comprises, for each telephone set, a corresponding exchange transducer with interface functions toward an exchange logics which controls a set of said transducers adapted to supply the exchange with information from the telephone sets and the latter with checking and operational orders as emitted by said logics; an exchange supervisor device being operatively connected to a group of exchange logic systems for the purpose of accepting from and transmitting to said logic systems or units programmable data, as well as general monitoring or alarm signals.